


darn you back together

by FandomTrash24601



Series: Only Room to Rise [6]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: (barely), (both? both is good), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Brotherly Affection, Captivity, Child Death, Children, Dehydration, Did part of this stem from quarantine feels? Yes, Experimentation, Fluff and Angst, Geralt and Jaskier are still cute as fuck, Human Experimentation, I don't know how medicine works, I think I'm entitled to tag some romance?, I think the mold counts as body horror, I'm repeating the part about the mold, Imprisonment, Injury, Jaskier is bossy but he does it with Love, Jaskier's got a brain cell and he's determined to use it, M/M, Mages, Magic, Major Character Injury, Markus is a huge sweetheart, Massage, Medical Experimentation, Medical Inaccuracies, Minor Injuries, Napping, OH MAN i almost forgot about, Panic, Romance, Romantic Soulmates, Science Experiments, Serious Injuries, Soft Eskel (The Witcher), Soft Lambert (The Witcher), Sort Of, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Starvation, Stregobor Being an Asshole (The Witcher), Trauma, Unethical Experimentation, Witcher Potions (The Witcher), Witcher Signs (The Witcher), but thank god for magic, can I tag for mildly erotic chapstick application, he's not actually in this fic but the results of his assholery are, he's under stress but he's soft I promise, idk how to tag it they're minor but could be deadly, ish?, lots of magic, mold, no beta we die like renfri, rated mature just to be cautious, what counts as body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:48:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26861665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FandomTrash24601/pseuds/FandomTrash24601
Summary: Eskel likes to think he’s an unflappable, dependable kind of guy.Title from The Amazing Devil's "The Rockrose and the Thistle"
Relationships: Eskel (The Witcher)/Original Character(s), Eskel (The Witcher)/Original Male Character(s), Eskel (The Witcher)/Original Witcher Character(s), Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Only Room to Rise [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1806898
Comments: 40
Kudos: 437





	darn you back together

Eskel likes to think he’s an unflappable, dependable kind of guy. He has to be, as Geralt’s right hand, but his dependability extends far past politics or even Geralt; he wants to be somebody who people can go to, as silly as it is for a Witcher to aspire to such things. After all, if Geralt—gods forbid—were to fall, they’ve made too many enemies to return to the way it was before. They’d have to choose a new leader.

It would probably be him, even if only because he was Geralt’s right hand. He wants to be worthy of it.

When Geralt brings up the idea of toppling the King of Kaedwen, Eskel puts a hand on his arm and says  _ Whatever you decide, brother. _ When Geralt inherits a child of all things, he looks his brother in his panic-gold eyes and asks  _ What do you need me to do? _ When Geralt sends him to Tretogor, Eskel goes and dethrones Vizimir and brings back an ex-slave (and hides the way that the boy’s desolate apathy makes his old bones throb with some twisted kind of sympathy). When Geralt sends him and a crew of Witchers to the woods around Gulet with suspiciously minimal instructions besides  _ No innocents are to be slaughtered, but don’t be afraid to use your sword as a mercy, _ Eskel is understandably concerned but would gladly follow Geralt right off the edges of the world.

He doesn’t question the orders.

He goes.

He, Aiden, Cedric and Axel, Letho, and a whole crew of other Witchers take a portal and wind up in the middle of a dense forest. It’s more Witchers than were used to make their way through a soldier-laden castle to Vizimir’s rooms, and that fact alone is enough to have Eskel on-edge. The whole lot of them creep through the woods on silent feet until they come across a clearing.

There’s a small fortress hidden there, not too old. It’s suspiciously quiet.

“Okay,” he breathes, just loud enough for his brethren to hear him even with their enhanced senses. “Aiden, Cedric and Axel, with me. We’re sneaking over the back. The rest of you, wait a minute and then rush the front to distract them. We don’t know exactly what we’re facing, but remember what the Wolf said: No harming the innocent, but don’t be afraid to distribute a mercy kill or two.”

He shudders to think at what they might find in there that Geralt even brought up mercy kills. Any Witcher worth their salt has mercy-killed at least a few times, whether it be an animal or—always less fortunately—a person, but it’s never any fun.

There’s a murmur of assent, barely-there affirmative breaths. Eskel clenches his fist and wishes there were a sword in it.

“Good,” he says. “Now split.”

Eskel, Aiden, and Cedric and Axel slink around the edge of the clearing, keeping low. It’ll be hard for anyone but another Witcher to spot them despite the high sun.

“The hell is this place?” he barely hears Axel breathe.

“Dunno,” Cedric replies. “Eskel, you know?”

He shakes his head. “Wolf said so.”

Hunched just inside the woods, facing the opposite wall as the gates, the five Witchers sit and wait for the promised raid. It won’t be hard to hear it; raids are very rarely quiet.

There’s the sound of shouting, suddenly, lots of it, and Eskel makes a break for the craggy fort walls. The rest of his team is hot on his heels, but they’ve hardly reached the rough surface when everything goes terribly, horribly quiet. Eskel swallows his stomach as it tries to climb up his throat and focuses on getting his part of the job done. He won’t fail Geralt.

Just as they reach the unmanned crenellations Eskel hears Letho say, utterly gobsmacked, “It’s just a bunch of kids.”

There’s a cackle that can’t belong to a girl much older than Ciri, high and sweet and chilling. “‘Just a bunch of kids.’ Can’t you recognize your own kin, brother?”

And then there’s shouts of horror from his men, and the sounds of sword meeting sword, and the scent of blood. Eskel hauls himself up over the battlements onto the walkway that rings the suspiciously small fortress, trusting his brothers to follow him. The sight that greets them takes his breath away.

His Witchers are fighting, quite literally, a bunch of children.

And the children have  _ powers. _

He watches a girl who can’t be older than ten hold out her hand and release a storm of fire so strong that he can feel the heat from the other side of the fortress. Stefan just barely gets out of the way, only to run into a boy of perhaps thirteen with twin daggers that are almost too big for his hands. He wields them—and  _ Aard _ —with unbelievable precision anyway. They’ve got the exact same semi-magical abilities as Witchers, except they’re still children and they look fully human. There’s not a single cat’s eye in sight that doesn’t belong to one of Eskel’s men.

The Witchers are trying not to hurt the children, and sooner or later it’s going to cost them their lives; the children are aiming to kill.

Letho is the first to cut down one of the kids. Eskel watches it happen, watches the man’s shortswords cut a girl’s neck, watches her crumple to the ground so small and still. She could only have been, what, twelve? Letho’s face turns green but he isn’t given the time to process it before another child is launching themselves at him with an inhuman screech of grief.

_ Gods, Geralt, _ Eskel thinks dazedly.  _ Did you know? _

They creep down a ladder tucked into the corner between the battlements and the keep, the focus of their raid. As he climbs down, he makes the mistake of glancing up and sees the expressions of those still on the wall. Cedric and Axel are leaning on each other, faces pale. Aiden’s lips hang open and his eyes are dull with horror.

With the sheer chaos in the fortress—there are just about two children for each Witcher, and they’re resilient little things—serving as an excellent distraction, it’s almost easy for Eskel, Aiden, and Cedric and Axel to sneak in; the door isn’t even locked, and swings silently open with barely a push.

There are stairs that go up, and stairs that spiral downwards. Eskel doesn’t particularly want to go down, but he’s the leader here. He motions for Cedric and Axel to head upwards and Aiden follows him down without a word. The air grows damp quickly, and sputtering torches throw sick light across the walls like they’re laughing. Eskel grips his sword tightly while he takes the uneven steps as silently as possible.

They find another door. Eskel glances over his shoulder at Aiden, who nods and steps through it into a long, dark hallway. He spares a thought of concern; Lambert might just lose it if Aiden dies, especially under Eskel’s watch.

Eskel continues downwards alone.

He feels like he’s walking forever before he reaches the bottom of the stairs. The battle above him has faded completely from his senses; he can’t hear anything, but he can smell festering rot and recent excrement behind the door in front of him. Is this what Geralt wanted him to find? Or was it the magical child soldiers? He wishes Geralt had told him more.

There’s absolutely no motion when the door swings open on rusty hinges that squeal. He can hear a heartbeat, unbelievably slow for a human, and feels his own skip a beat. If it was a human he’s come to rescue, they’re past the point of being saved.

But it’s not a human; when a little torchlight makes its way past Eskel’s frame into the room, slitted eyes the color of sunlit honey stare back at him.

“Run,” the Witcher rasps. He speaks like he can barely get the words out of his throat, which is cloaked by a raggedy beard. “Before they get you, too.”

There are heartbeats on the stairs behind him and he literally couldn’t be bothered to care if they’re human or Witcher right now, because there’s a full-body warmth emanating from just under his belly button. It’s just as soon wiped away by cold horror more effective than any punch to the gut. Witchers may be resilient, but they can still die from ordinary things like malnutrition, and this one—this one, his  _ soulmate, _ the one who could maybe make him look as stupidly happy as Geralt does sometimes—might just be too far gone.

He opens his mouth to talk and—“We’re not going anywhere,” Cedric says, having been the source of the footsteps. “Are you kidding me? Come on, Eskel, let’s grab him and go.”

Eskel steps forward and bends down and works on his soulmate’s shackles and pretends that he doesn’t feel like he, too, is dying. They’re in the middle of something; he has to keep it together. But it’s so hard when the man before him is so stick-thin that he looks mummified, when Eskel knows that it’s only his body devouring the last of its own muscles keeping the man alive. The shackles are useless at this point except to let Eskel know the shade of his real skin—pale, terribly so—at the thin border where they’ve chafed the filth away but haven’t rubbed the skin itself away. There’s no way of telling what his real hair color is.

The other Witcher can’t even move on his own, so it falls to Eskel to pick him up, and he’s just barely heavier than Ciri and it’s  _ killing _ Eskel to hold this man in his arms.

Cedric and Axel move up the stairs before him like guards. They meet up with Aiden at the doorway where Eskel parted with him, and it’s only a small relief to know that there was nothing waiting to kill him down the hallway. There are some papers in Aiden’s hands, so he assumes there’s something important on them, but it’s all he can do to focus on getting them all out of here so Yen can summon a portal.

“We found cribs upstairs,” Axel says as they climb. “Just… loads and loads of cribs. It was weird.”

“I found an alchemical workshop and… instructions.”

“This reeks of dirty play,” Cedric mutters.

By the time they make it out of the keep, the fight is over. All of the children are dead. Eskel looks down at the man in his arms and hears Geralt say  _ mercy killings, _ thinks  _ No, fuck that. _ He refuses to set a blade to the throat of his own soulmate.

“Fucking hells.” Letho spits on the ground. “What the fuck was this?”

“I wish I knew,” Eskel says. “Who’s got the xenovox?”

“I do.”

While Aiden steps aside to call Yennefer, Eskel tries not to squirm under all the attention he’s getting. The other Witchers in the fortress are seeing him, now, seeing the limp body that he carries—one of their brothers. His soulmate is… asleep? Unconscious? He doesn’t know.

“No,” one of the Witchers says. It’s Stefan, singed and a little cut up but far from dead. His eyes are blown impossibly wide. “Markus?”

“Is that his name?” Eskel asks.

Stefan pushes his way through all the other Witchers to reach his Crane brother, unable to pay attention to anything else. “Oh hells, Markus…”

“Portal incoming,” Aiden hollers.

A portal opens just in front of the doors to the keep itself only moments later. Eskel and Markus and Stefan are the first ones through, followed by the injured, and then the uninjured. Geralt and Yennefer are waiting for them, alone. Before anyone can make a break for the baths in an effort to wash away what they’ve seen, Geralt speaks.

“You have seen and done things that you are not proud of today,” he says. “I know this. I apologize for sending you in without telling you what you’d face. Those who saw the inside of the keep, please stay behind.”

Nobody has much to say to that. Stefan, with reluctant steps and many glances backwards, leaves with the rest of the Witchers. They disperse to the baths or the infirmary, muttering amongst themselves about the strange, bloodthirsty children with the powers of Witchers. It’ll be the talk of Kaer Morhen by the end of the day.

“What was that?” Aiden demands incredulously the moment they’re alone. He doesn’t bother with a respectful or deferential tone, and Geralt doesn’t chastise him for it.

“The kingdoms who are… less fond of us,” Geralt begins, “decided that they didn’t want to pay for the service of Witchers. But they still have monsters. They had to come up with a way of ridding their lands of monsters without our help.”

“So they turned to Stregobor,” Yennefer spits. The name sounds acidic on her tongue.

“What did you find there?” Geralt asks them bluntly.

Axel swallows hard. “Children,” he says.

“Children with the ability to use signs,” Cedric adds.

“Children who were even more unstable than us Cats,” Aiden says.

“Cedric and I found cradles upstairs. Just… stacks of cradles, waiting to be pulled down. There had to have been a hundred of ‘em.”

“I found what looked like an alchemical brewing room. These were in there.” Aiden holds out the papers, and he’s hardly extended his arm before Yennefer has snatched them from him with a little too much vigor. He shrinks back from her despite the fact that she’s the one who invaded his personal space.

“I found—” Eskel has to stop, clear his throat. “I found a Witcher. Crane school, I think; Stefan recognized him.”

Yennefer looks up from the papers she’s been ogling, and Eskel’s heart sinks when her brows knit together. “He’s not in good shape. Triss might be able to help, but there’s a chance we’ll have to, hmm… take mercy on him.”

He barely refrains from snarling at her, and catches Geralt’s expression ripple.

“We’re going to try everything first,” he says coldly. The thought of losing his soulmate before he’s ever known him is enough to turn his blood to ice. “He’s one of us.”

“Of course,” Yennefer says, but she doesn’t—she doesn’t  _ get it. _ She can’t possibly understand.

Geralt lets them go with just a nod. It’s a monumental effort not to sprint to Triss’ brewery, where he’ll surely find her; Markus can’t be that close to death, can he? A glance downward only makes Eskel more nervous. Markus’ heartbeat sounds wrong, and he’s scorching hot but not sweating, and there’s the rancid-sweet scent of infection coming from his wrists and ankles. He’s only wearing ratty braies, but Eskel can’t see a soulmark despite the abundance of skin available. It could be hiding beneath the braies or the filth, or he might not have one at all which means—

No. He can’t spiral.

He opens the door with his feet—a little too aggressively if Triss’ shocked little gasp and the spike of fear is anything to judge by—and says, desperately, “Triss.” Blessing of blessings, she looks like she’s not actively brewing anything at the moment.

“Oh,” she breathes, rushing forward to assess the figure in his arms. “Oh, Eskel.”

“Please,” he begs.

“Quickly,” she says, shooing him out the door. “To the infirmary.”

He doesn’t run, but it’s a close thing. His steps are quick and long and he thinks he almost tramples three servants in the process. All of them dive out of his way in time.

The infirmary is empty by now, all the Witchers injured in the raid having cleaned up and cleared out; it’s rare that any of them are injured enough to need it for long. Triss is hot on his heels as he sets Markus down on one of the cots, a storm of whirling skirts and curls. It’s probably bad that she’s so panicked.

He almost misses the wet rag that’s tossed at his face and Triss’ barked, “Wipe him down. I need to see what we’re working with.”

Eskel kneels by the side of the cot and, with hands that don’t shake, start to wipe away the grime that has nearly grown into a kind of plaster. The infected wrists and ankles are the priority. He can’t help but be grateful that Markus is unconscious; his motions would certainly be painful, seeing as each swipe brings away an odious, sludge-like mix of blood, pus, and filth. How long have these wounds been open, constantly irritated so that they never truly heal? The thought makes Eskel’s stomach clench.

Triss has taken Markus’ other wrist and ankle, wiping the affected areas down so that she can get to work immediately. She’s hardly started before she frowns and wipes a streak up the front of Markus’ shin from the edge of the narrow band she’d cleared. In the filth-free wake of her rag is not normal skin, but skin that’s so terribly mottled with flaky, reddish-purple splotches that the normal skin color is barely visible beneath it. Eskel stares, baffled, and Triss lets out a string of unladylike curses.

“What is it?” Eskel asks, leaning forward to inspect the splotches. They’re red at the edges but fade to an ugly-looking purple near the center, and the bright flakiness suggests that it’s painful. Just looking at it makes Eskel’s entire body itch.

Triss’ lips are flat. “Mold.”

“Mold?” Eskel looks up at her incredulously. Grim-faced, she starts wiping down the rest of his leg and Eskel follows suit on his own side.

Triss doesn’t reply, but her face only grows more stern as they wipe his skin clean. There doesn't seem to be a single area that the mold hasn’t touched. By the time they’ve cleaned his limbs, Triss looks thunderous.

She tosses a new, clean rag at Eskel and says tersely, “Wipe down his torso.”

The mottled, mockery of a blush spreads all across his torso too, down past the hem of his nasty grey braies and up the spindly column of his neck. The dip from the ribcage to the hollow stomach almost hurts for Eskel to run the rag over, but the ribs themselves are the worst. He wishes he could trade jobs with Triss, who’s liberally coating his infected wrists and ankles with salve before bandaging them.

“This is awful,” she mutters.

“What do you need me to do?” Eskel asks, tossing the rag into the small pile that’s built up.

“We need to clean his back, but I don’t want him resting on the sheets we dirtied up.”

“Tip him on his side,” Eskel suggests. “We’ll clean one side now as best we can, tip him onto the other one, and wipe down his back as well as any lingering filth on his side.”

She nods and begins to wipe down one of Markus’ sides. “Strip him out of his underwear and clean him down there, will you?”

Eskel’s just hooked his fingers into the waistband of Markus’ braies, barely hanging on to the drastic jut of his hipbones, when he starts to drift upwards from unconsciousness. His brow wrinkles and a creaky whine drops from his chapped lips.

“Oh, you’re awake,” Triss says. “There’s no need to worry; you’re in Kaer Morhen. You’re safe here.”

His eyes hang-half closed even as he visibly fight to keep them open. “Mage?” he rasps, trying to twist away from her. Eskel reaches out and places his gloved hands on Markus’ too-skinny body to try and calm him. It doesn’t work.

“I’m a healer,” Triss explains over Markus’ panicked panting, stepping away with her hands up. “I’m nothing like whatever monsters have hurt you. May I please help you? I’ve already put salve on your infected wounds and bandaged them, and I can give you Golden Oriole now that you’re awake, but I’d like to use magic to help with the mold if you’ll let me.”

Markus is trembling like a late-autumn leaf, eyes nearly rolling in his head like those of a spooked steed. “J’s’ lemme go,” he croaks. “‘S fine.”

Let him go? After all this hard work, just let him go? Not like this, not so soon.

“Please,” Eskel blurts, too desperate to be embarrassed by his blatant distress. “Let us help you.”

Markus sinks into the cot, honey-sun eyes blown wide open. He looks so shocked that it borders on frightened, and Eskel can’t blame him. Their situation is hardly ordinary. Markus’ throat flexes like he wants to talk, but in the end all he can do is offer a barely-there nod as he relaxes into the cot beneath him.

“Thank you,” Eskel whispers, a flood of tension rushing from his body.

Markus’ eyes are sliding shut again, like he’s used up the very last of his reserves, but his hand twitches to the side, fingers curled gently in offering. He doesn’t have the strength to squeeze back when Eskel reaches out and takes his hand, but his fingers flex a little and it’s enough.

“What was that?” Triss asks once Markus is well and truly unconscious again, urging Eskel to discard the raggedy braies with a wave of her hand.

“He’s, uh…” Eskel pulls down the braies and spots bold script curling over the hip nearest to Triss, mottled and distorted by the mold that covers him here, too. How Markus is still alive, Eskel doesn’t know. “Well.”

Triss catches the soulmark and gasps. “Oh, dear. I suppose we’ll have to make sure he makes it, won’t we?”

They tip him onto his side and suck in thin breaths through their teeth at the sight. He knew he’d smelled more infection than just the wrists and ankles, but this… His back is a network of weeping lashes, crisscrossed haphazardly and in varying stages of infection. This must’ve been how they kept him in line; if he’s been living like this for very long, it’s a wonder he lived long enough to be rescued. Triss leans forward to peer over at his back and outcusses even Lambert at the sight. Something dark twists in Eskel’s gut at the sound, some frantic thing curling up to try and protect itself.

One hand is being used to keep Markus on his side, but while Triss wipes down his side Eskel uses his free hand to wipe Markus’ back down as best he can. It’s an ugly sight. When they’re done, Eskel switches positions with Triss so she can access his back easier. She uses a bit of magic, probably an attempt to drive infection from the flesh, and then gets to work slathering almost Markus’ entire back with sharp-smelling salve. Unable to wrap the bandages around his chest, Triss just lays the strips on his back and uses a little more magic so that they stay there.

Once that’s done, and once Eskel has managed to wipe the filth off of Markus’ more intimate bits without allowing his eyes to process what exactly he’s looking at, Triss nods at him.

“Now lift him up so I can wipe off the last of that filth, and then we’re going to rinse out his hair,” Triss says, nodding.

Eskel peels off his armor and gambeson, which have already touched the filth and will likely only get Markus dirty again, and then moves around the bed to pick him up so that the side with lingering filth isn’t the side pressed into his chest.

Triss wipes him down as quickly as she can before instructing Eskel to tip Markus back so that his hair—longer than Yen’s but too sparse—hangs straight down. She places a bucket below him, and goes to find a small pitcher to sluice Markus’ hair. It’s warm, at least, where runaway beads rush down to soak Eskel’s sleeve. His hair is black below all the grime.

He stares down at Markus’ splotchy, skeletal face and very firmly ignores the ugly thing rising in him, the thing that wants to strangle him from the inside.

When the water rushing from his hair runs clean after some scalp-scratching that Eskel doesn’t envy Triss for having to do, she gently squeezes the hair dry with a soft cloth. She takes up a blade, too, and shears most of Markus’ beard. She can’t get directly to the skin with the mold in the way, but she gets close enough. At last she steps back and nods at Eskel.

The old cot is disgusting, and he can’t help but to wrinkle his nose at it as he sets Markus down on a new, clean cot. Even though Markus isn’t awake, Eskel does it with as much care as he can muster and then arranges Markus’ limbs in a manner that he hopes is more comfortable. He almost looks worse without all the filth. Triss has the thought to drape a cloth over Markus’ genitals, which Eskel in his frazzled state would completely have forgotten to do.

“Good,” Triss says when they’re well and truly done. “Good; stay by him, if you will? If he wakes up again, try to get Golden Oriole down his throat. I’m going to go brew excessive amounts of a concoction that should soothe his skin.”

And just like that, Eskel is left alone with fading adrenaline and a soulmate who’s probably on the brink of succumbing to death by infection, of all things.

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, certainly not slumped over the side of the cot like some lovesick fool.

It’s fingers prodding at his forehead that wake him up, weak jabs that just barely make contact. Eskel jerks upward like he’s been stabbed all the same, eyes roaming the room with a wildness before he realizes where he is and who he’s with. Markus is awake, if the poking and the not-completely-closed eyes are any indication.

“F’k’n ‘ells,” Markus mutters, barely able to get his chapped lips to move without them splitting. “G’ t’ bed.”

“Triss told me to stay with you while she brews something for your skin,” Eskel says, searching around the room for— _ Ah, there. _ “And to get you to drink some Golden Oriole if you woke up again.”

“Not w’ter?”

“Not yet. I’ll have to ask Triss.” He uncorks the bottle and asks, “When’s the last time you had anything to drink?”

“Least… two weeks ‘go.”

“Gods,” Eskel mutters. Two weeks without water for a Witcher sucks, but it’s survivable. But for a Witcher so weakened by prolonged neglect and abuse? They might as well be a human, and two weeks is all but a death sentence. “I’ll get you some water as soon as I’m sure I can do it in a way that won’t accidentally kill you. Drink this, for now.” He holds out the bottle and realizes his mistake a fraction too late. “Uh, do you need me to—?”

“Mhmm.”

“Right, yeah.” He puts a hand under Markus’ neck to lift his head—no use in drinking Golden Oriole if you’re just going to choke on it—and brings the vial to his lips. They leave blood on the rim of the bottle. “Slowly, now.”

Markus can’t stomach much before he’s trying to pull his mouth away, eyes hazy and half-lidded. Eskel’s not sure if he’s even fully lucid.

“So you’re a Crane?” Eskel asks as he lowers Markus’ head back to the slightly elevated pillows. “Stefan seemed to recognize you.”

“He’s still alive?” If nothing else, the Golden Oriole has lubricated Markus’ throat enough for him to speak. A smile cracks his lips wide open and Eskel takes a clean scrap of cloth left beside the Golden Oriole to dab the blood away. “That’s nice to hear.” His gaze drops to the amulet hanging around Eskel’s neck, and his laugh is terribly wheezy. “Fuck, I’ve got a Wolf?”

“I could say something similar about you,” Eskel jokes back, some invisible tension lessening. “Your crew are the ones who invent mad machines whenever they get drunk.”

Markus’ eyes are closed but he hums, split lips spread in a small smile.

“Eskel,” Triss whispers as she comes into the room. “Is he awake?”

“He is,” Markus says.

“Oh, good!”

“He hasn’t had anything to drink in fourteen days, save the Golden Oriole he just drank,” Eskel breaks in. “Can we give him anything?”

“Wait and see if he can keep the Golden Oriole down first,” Triss says. “If he can, then we’ll start on a drinking schedule to get him rehydrated. If he can’t keep liquids down, then we’ll need to do more than just pour another glass down his throat.”

Markus sighs unhappily. “Jus’ want some ale,” he mutters, eyes sliding shut again. Eskel supposes that whatever he’s been through would be enough to suck the energy out of any Witcher.

“How’s the brewing?”

“Good.” Triss nods. “I’ve started the base and Yennefer, the dear, volunteered to go get what I needed—I required an awful lot of it to make enough of the balm, but it should go a long way to heal his skin.”

“Is there no magic you can do?”

“There’s magic, but it won’t be enough to heal him fully. I can do something for his skin, and I can do something for the way that his muscles are eating themselves, and I can do a little for his dehydration, but I can’t fix it all.” She offers him a smile that smacks with pre-exhaustion. “Even just doing that isn’t going to be fun for me, afterwards.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, feeling ashamed that he’s disregarded the toll that it takes on her to do so much healing magic at once.

She rolls her eyes and sets gentle fingers on his shoulders. “Oh, don’t worry, you big softie. I know you’re worried about him.”

Eskel doesn’t remember grabbing Markus’ hand, but it’s in his nonetheless. He stares down at it, can’t bring himself to let go even though he has a thousand things to do.

“You’re going to have to change out of those clothes and bathe,” Triss tells him. “I will, too; until his mold is gone, anything and anyone that touches his skin needs to be thoroughly cleaned.”

Eskel looks at his gambeson and armor, discarded on the floor, and at the way that Markus’ fingers have curled instinctively around his own. There’s a fierce ache in his chest, and the thought of letting go of his hand only makes it infinitely worse.

“Someone has to be here,” he says, barely refraining from choking on the words. “He—If he wakes up and doesn’t know what’s going on…”

“You go bathe first,” Triss tells him gently. “I’ll take care of the sheets, stay with him until you’re back. You were the one carrying him while he was filthy.”

With great reluctance, he lets Markus’ dry-patch hand slip from his own and stands up. “I suppose I should bathe. If Geralt needs me, I shouldn’t be shedding mold all over the place.”

“No indeed,” Triss agrees. “Leave your gambeson and armor here; I’ll take care of it with the sheets. Do be sure to fold all your clothing inside out at the baths, though.”

“Will do, Triss. Thank you.”

He makes his way down to the baths in a haze, but nobody around him greets him any differently so he must be doing a good job hiding it. Despite the way his eyes are heavy, he keeps them forced open and responds to every nod with a nod of his own.

Everyone else from this morning’s raid is gone by the time he gets down there; the springs are almost entirely empty, actually, and he sinks into one of the hottest pools—almost too hot even for him—with a long, weary sigh. He promises himself a minute of lounging before he gets to work scrubbing any mold residue from his skin.

He doesn’t even get that; Lambert all but cannonballs into the pool and Eskel chokes on a wave of enchanted mineral-water. Temper frayed, he bares all his teeth in a snarl and lashes out with such a strong kick that it knocks Lambert right over. He resurfaces sputtering and scowling.

“I was just _ joking _ with you,” he snaps. “Fuckssake, Esk.”

“Fuck off,” Eskel mutters, too tired to keep his anger up. He sinks low enough that the waterline almost reaches his eyes.

“Who pissed in your ale?”

Eskel doesn’t actually want to talk about it but there’s a frantic energy building in his chest and it has to go  _ somewhere, _ he has to tell  _ someone, _ so—”Met my soulmate today.” He has to rise a bit out of the water to do so, which is irritating but not even in the top fifteen worst things to happen to him today.

“That’s a good thing, Eskel,” Lambert says like he’s talking to a particularly slow child.

Eskel glares at him. “Tell me, what new people did we meet today?”

“Well, uh—” Eskel sees the moment it clicks, when he realizes that Eskel’s soulmate was either a deranged—and now dead—child, or the gravely unwell Witcher they had managed to rescue. “Ah. Is he doing alright? Hanging in there?”

“I don’t think he’s going to die before breakfast tomorrow morning,” Eskel mutters sourly, “but he’s—It’s not good. There’s mold all over his body, for one thing. For another, both his ankles and wrists and his entire back is a mess of raw, infected skin. Triss and I have worked on cleaning him off and putting salve on the infected zones, and I got him to drink some Golden Oriole earlier, but that’s hardly going to fix him.”

Lambert looks genuinely sympathetic, which is a hell of a shock. “That sucks, brother,” he says. “Uh, listen, Geralt wanted me to send you to him if I saw you.”

“Triss needs to bathe,” he says, rubbing his hands over his face and grabbing for the soap. “I’ve got to get back to her. Can’t have him waking up without knowing what’s going on.”

“I’ll sit by him ‘till one of you comes back,” Lambert offers. “Tell him what’s going on if he wakes up.”

Eskel stares scrutinizingly at his brother. “You’re serious?”

“Don’t make me say it again,” Lambert snaps. “You’ve got three seconds to take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it, I’ll take it. Gods, Lambert. You think you could take my clothes to Triss when you go? Keep it inside out; everything that touches him needs to be washed.”

Lambert’s help is a bolstering force, and he’s got just enough energy to finish the bath and go—after a necessary detour to his rooms to redress—directly to Geralt’s office. He’s slumped over his desk, rubbing at his temples. Jaskier is standing behind him and weaving some sort of elaborate braid.

“Geralt,” he says quietly.

“Eskel.” He gestures vaguely in front of him, at the seat on the other side of the desk. “You want to give your testimony about today’s events?”

“Not really,” Eskel mutters, but he does as asked and recounts the day’s events in an exhausted monotone. Jaskier reeks of distress and his fingers start twitching in Geralt’s hair—he’s not as unaffected by the tale as he’d like to pretend.

“You were carrying the Witcher they’d held captive,” Geralt says at last. “Who is he? Has he regained consciousness? I’d like to talk to him and figure out what exactly he was doing in that cell.”

Eskel feels himself prickling, shoulders tensing like raised hackles, but is helpless to stop it. He at least has the self-control not to snarl at his brother, his oldest friend, but he can’t keep the tightness out of his voice when he says, “His name is Markus. He’s a Crane. He regained consciousness twice, but not for long either time; it’ll be a while before he’s strong enough for questioning, I’d think.”

Jaskier’s fingers have gone still in Geralt’s hair, and he looks over the top of their lord’s white hair to make concerned eye-contact with Eskel. He ducks his head and focuses on the grain of the desk.

“If that’s all,” Eskel says after a long silence, “I’d like to get back to him.”

“Who is he?” Jaskier asks quietly.

Eskel’s already standing, but as he turns away he brushes his fingers against his lower stomach where the words  _ Run. Before they get you, too _ are printed on his skin. They were so foreboding that he’d always hated them, stewed in thoughts of his soulmate being a civilian he was just too late to save from whatever monster he was hunting.

“Oh, Eskel,” Geralt says. Geralt, his brother, who knows just as well as Eskel where his soulmark is and what it says. “He’s not…?”

“I need to get back to him,” Eskel says tightly. “Good afternoon.”

Triss is gone when Eskel returns to the infirmary, but Lambert’s there just as he’d promised he’d be. He groans and stands from the chair when Eskel steps into the room.

“Thank the gods. I was about to lose my mind.”

“Yeah, far be it from you not to regret a nice deed.”

They meet in the center of the room, stop. Lambert jerks his head towards Markus. “His skin’s really fucked up; you weren’t joking about the mold.”

“Why would I have been?” Eskel slaps him on the shoulder and moves past him to sit down by Markus’ cot. “Thanks for being here.”

Lambert almost walks into Triss as she returns with damp hair and a new dress, but steps back like a gentleman and lets her through before he takes his leave.

“Alright,” she sighs. “Yen agreed to craft that balm for me, so I can focus on healing him.”

“Oh?” Eskel stands and gestures for her to take the seat. She offers a smile as she settles into it. “That’s good.”

“For you, too.” Triss stretches and flexes her fingers as she prepares to settle in for heavy casting. “Off to bed, now.”

“I—Can’t I stay?”

“You can, I suppose, but there won’t be anything to watch.” She twists in her seat to look up at him with scrutinizing eyes. “If you stay, I’m requiring you to lay down.”

“What? Why?”

“You look exhausted; no catastrophe is going to happen if you close your eyes for a few minutes, I promise you.”

“Hmm.”

He does as asked when she narrows her eyes at him, trying not to roll his eyes as he settles onto a clean cot. He’s not exhausted; he’ll  _ prove  _ to her how not-exhausted he is by staying awake, even if the cot beneath him becomes increasingly comfortable.

It’s only Geralt’s ridiculous body mass coming down on top of him that wakes him up.

“Fucking—” He tries to lurch upright but can’t, because the Warlord of the North has flopped onto him like he weighs only a quarter of what he does, and can’t even finish his sentence because all the breath has been driven from his lungs.

“In my defense,” Geralt says, still laying limply on top of him, “we tried many other methods of waking you up.”

“Get off,” Eskel wheezes.

He takes Geralt’s offered hand with a scowl and lets himself be yanked to his feet. “Come on, supper’s ready.”

“You’ll need to brush your hair first,” Markus mumbles. Eskel almost jumps, not having realized he was awake, and wonders what the hell he must’ve thought of Geralt’s unorthodox rousing method.

“It’ll be fine.”

“It’s not fine.” Geralt runs his fingers through Eskel’s hair in an effort to make it look nicer, and Eskel’s helpless to do anything about it after being teamed up on by both his oldest friend and his soulmate. “How did you manage to do this to yourself?”

“I see you’ve met Markus?” Eskel asks. He’s already tired again just from trying to imagine the shit these two are going to get into once Markus is fully healed.

“You didn’t tell me you were friends with the White Wolf himself,” Markus says. He doesn’t sound mad, which is a small consolation.

“You weren’t awake long enough for me to tell you,” Eskel counters.

“He’s more than a friend; he’s my brother and my right hand,” Geralt says.

Eskel watches Markus take this information with wide eyes. “You’re more powerful than I thought you were.”

“I’ve never been drawn to power.” Eskel shrugs. “Geralt needed a right hand man, and I wasn’t going to let him be without one.”

“I’m not drawn to power either,” Geralt grumbles.

“You’re just the fool who took up the mantle,” Eskel agrees.

“Do I get anything to eat?” Markus asks Triss, whose hands are still hovering over him. Her face is pinched and wan, but she’s got that determined set to her jaw that lets Eskel know that trying to get her to ease off would be a bad idea.

“It won’t be nearly as rich as what’s being served in the dining hall, but we’ll see what you can keep down.”

“M’kay.” Markus’ face looks better, Eskel notes happily. The mold is still there but it’s patchier and not nearly as purple. His eyes are hooded again—it won’t be long before he slides back to unconsciousness—but he fixes them on Eskel and asks softly, “Will you come back?”

“Of course,” Eskel says roughly. “Of course I’ll be back.”

He doesn’t realize how hungry he is until he’s shoved the first bite of food into his mouth. None of it tastes like much, but he inhales a greater amount than his usual. Jaskier looks a little appalled, with his normal human portions set in front of him.

“Where’s the fire?” he asks as Eskel devours a bread roll in two massive bites.

“No fire,” Eskel says around his mouthful. “Markus wanted me back.”

“He also probably doesn’t want you choking to death in an effort to shave five minutes off,” Jaskier replies. “Slow down before you actually inhale your food.”

For all that he’s—in the lifespan of a Witcher—still a child, Jaskier’s face is stern enough that Eskel does start to take more reasonable bites and actually chew his food. Still, he returns to Markus as soon as he’s able. Triss arrives in the infirmary not long after him, hefting a large jar that smells strongly of a mix between olives and some sickly floral scent. He doesn’t bother to question it; this must be the salve.

“Help me roll him over—use something to protect your hands.” Triss sets the jar down with a grunt, looking a little faint. “We’ll rub this salve into his skin, rub some lavender oil into his scalp, and call it a night.”

“You go on and go to bed, Triss,” Eskel says as he pulls on a pair of gloves. “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“You’re too sweet,” Triss sighs, sinking down onto the first cot they’d set Markus on. It’s clean, now; someone must’ve changed the linens while he was asleep. “If you insist.”

Markus gasps and flinches when Eskel’s hands brush his skin, and Eskel curses. He’d thought that Markus was more deeply asleep than that, but clearly not, and in his disorientation he doesn’t seem to know where he is.

“Fuck off,” he spits, thrashing.

“Markus, Markus,” Eskel soothes. “It’s just me.”

“I—” Markus sinks back into the cot, shaking, his wide-honey eyes almost looking past Eskel into some unknown horror beyond. “I—”

“It’s alright,” Eskel murmurs. “We’ve got something to put on your skin that should help with the mold. Can I do that?”

Markus’ breathing is slower, now. Calmer. “Yeah,” he mumbles, his eyes closing again. He looks embarrassed.

“Great, thank you. I’m going to turn you over onto your stomach, now.”

Markus hums an affirmation and allows himself to be manipulated, limbs flopping about like a ragdoll. If he’s in pain, he does a good job at hiding it. Or perhaps pain has sunk itself into his natural scent and Eskel’s just gone nose-blind to it. The thought is distressing.

Like his face, the amount of mold on his backside has been heavily reduced. He also weighs just a little more—Eskel supposes that this was Triss’ work, and is grateful to her for it. She could’ve left him to recuperate entirely naturally and saved her own energy.

It seems that Markus is asleep again, his lips pushed slightly apart by the way his face is pressed into the pillow. They’re still bloody and split and Eskel aches to feel them against his own despite their current state. Anything of the sort will have to wait, but Eskel has waited more than a century; he can wait a little longer.

Triss hands the heavy jar of salve to Eskel with half-closed eyes. She mumbles a series of instructions that Eskel is sure to commit to memory and then leaves the room, unable to walk in a straight line from her exhaustion.

The salve is unlike common salves; it’s oil-based and slides thickly over the edge of the spoon-like tool he uses to scoop it up and drizzle it over Markus’ exposed back. It was to prevent double-dipping and contaminating the salve, Triss had explained. He was to use his fingers to rub the salve into skin, but not touch the salve in the jar.

Markus’ skin is warm beneath his fingers, and he hadn’t thought that there was any additional tension in Markus’ body but he sags beneath Eskel’s touch. Biting his lip to keep a smile off of his face, he works his fingertips in little circles to work the salve in until Markus’ skin shines.

“Are you awake?” Eskel asks, barely more than a breath.

Eskel can barely hear Markus’ response. “Barely.” He swallows, visibly hesitates to speak again. “You don’t have to be here, you know. I’ll survive until morning without salve.”

“Maybe you will.” Eskel splays his whole hand over Markus’ stick-skinny side, fingers brushing the bottom of his ribcage. His heart is pounding in his chest at such a liberty. “But I want to be here.”

“Well…” Markus’ eyes are closed but the very tips of his ears have tinted themselves pink—all the blushing a Witcher can do. “If you want to be here.”

“Go to sleep,” Eskel urges. “I’ll stay.”

“Go when you’re done,” Markus protests. “Sleep in a real bed.”

“I can go without a real bed just fine.” He spreads more oil, rubs it in with a touch softer than any he’s used since holding Ciri as an infant. “Don’t worry about me.”

Markus slides into sleep before he can formulate a response. It takes a long time for Eskel to cover him completely in the salve and decorate his scalp and jaw with lavender oil, but he wants to do a good job. At least Markus doesn’t wake up again, which means he can’t forget where he is and panic.

When he’s done, he thoroughly cleans his hands to rid them of oil and mold residue. He stares at the chair. Should he take the chair? Should he risk the cot again? He’s far more tired than he has any right to be, and runs the risk of falling too deeply asleep if he takes the cot.

It’s in the midst of these musings that the door swings open. Jaskier stands in the doorframe, looking small and a little lost, but he steels himself before stepping inside. Eskel watches him, wondering what business he has here. Shouldn’t he and Geralt be going to bed by now? He doesn’t know how long it took to cover Markus in the salve, but Jaskier bears his usual post-performance flush.

“You,” Jaskier says, “are going to bed.”

“Says who?” Eskel asks.

“Says Geralt, and also me. You’re exhausted and everyone can tell, Eskel. I’ll stay here if you want someone by Markus’ side.”

“Witchers don’t need as much sleep as humans,” Eskel argues. “I’m fine.”

“Fine?” Jaskier raises his eyebrows and crosses his arms, hips popping out to the side. Ah, he’s genuine about this. “I didn’t have a day nearly as stressful as yours, and you look dead in your seat.”

“I slept,” Eskel says stubbornly.

“Yes, and you were so out of it—so in need of rest—that it took Gearlt in all his weighty glory collapsing atop you for you to wake up.” Jaskier narrows his eyes. “Don’t make me go and get him. Because I will.”

“I—”

“I told you to go to bed,” Markus slurs, his bloody lips sleep-heavy. “Idiot.”

“What is it with you and waking up just in time to take the opposite side?” Eskel grumbles, slouching in his seat.

“Because you’re a fool,” Jaskier says sweetly. “He’s got  _ my-soulmate-is-being-an-idiot _ senses. It looks like they come built-in when it comes to those attached to the upper echelons of this empire.”

“You have to use ‘em often?” Markus asks, grinning despite the way his lips crack.

“All the time,” Jaskier says. “If you could use yours to get him to leave, that would be much appreciated.”

“Eskel,” Markus says, his head lolling against the pillow. “If you could follow the advice of your friend and go to bed, that would be wonderful. I mean, if you’re the right hand of Mister “White Wolf” himself, you’ve got a lot to do.”

“I…” Eskel frowns, trying to come up with words to say.

“I let you help me,” Markus whispers. “Help yourself, too.”

He can’t argue with that, so he pushes himself from the bedside chair and lets Jaskier settle into it. The man has changed his clothing and is dressed now in something more comfortable than his everyday clothes. He’s ready to settle in for the entire night.

Jaskier looks at him when he hovers a little too long and says, “Eskel. It’s fine. Go to bed before I have Geralt drag you there himself and then sleep on top of you.”

He’s barely made it to bed and stripped down to just his braies before the exhaustion that’s been lingering like a predator at the back of his mind sweeps forward and pulls him under.

By the time he wakes up, the sun is coming into his room at such an angle that he knows he’s overslept by several hours. He tries not to actually run, but he certainly isn’t moving at a relaxed pace as he pulls on trousers and a simple linen shirt. Jaskier can’t have stayed next to Markus all night and this far into the morning. Who’s with him now, if anyone?

Triss is awake and bustling around the infirmary, organizing bottles and taking stock of bandages despite heavy under-eye bags. On the cot where Eskel had slept just the afternoon before, Jaskier is thoroughly unconscious. There’s drool.

“There you are!” Markus sounds alive this morning, laying in bed fully alert. The mold even on his front is much better, only red instead of dark purple in places. He hasn’t filled out any, but he looks more like a person and less like a breathing skeleton. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” Eskel rubs his hands over his face. “How are you feeling?”

“Better than yesterday. Alive.” He grins. His lips split again. At this rate they’ll scar, but Eskel doesn’t think he’ll mind such a minor one. “Wanting to keep living.”

“That’s definitely an improvement.” Eskel settles into the chair by Markus’ bed, aching to grab his hand. “It’s good to see that you’re doing better. The enchantments on the salve and the oil seem to have worked.”

“And Triss’ work yesterday did a great deal, too.” Markus’ eyes linger on Eskel’s hair. “You’ve let your hair go to shit again.”

“And you look so put-together at the moment,” Eskel fires back playfully.

“I’m not the right hand to the most powerful man on the Continent.” His face turns contemplative, eyes dropping to where Eskel’s unbuttoned shirt reveals his collarbones. “He’s going to want to talk to me, isn’t he? I’m the only one who was inside.”

“Yeah,” Eskel says. “He asked me yesterday. I all but told him to fuck off.”

“No need,” Markus says. “I’m feeling much more awake today, and anything I can do to help catch those bastards, I’ll do gladly.”

“I’ll tell him that when I see him.”

“Good, good.” Markus looks like he wants to say something, and Eskel waits for a minute but Markus stays quiet.

“What is it?” he prompts.

Markus scowls at his mold-mottled hands, glances up at Triss and back down again. “Want to touch you,” he mumbles.

“Soon enough,” Eskel says. “It won’t be long before your mold is gone, but…” He twists to face Triss, who’s busy in a farther corner of the infirmary. “Triss, do you have any lip balms? Markus bleeds every time he talks.”

“Yes, give me just a moment.”

She bustles over to a towering cabinet full of all sorts of little jars and then brings one over to Eskel. The goop inside of it smells like beeswax, probably from the hives that the Bears have taken to fostering, and Eskel can tell as soon as he dips a finger in it that it’s enchanted.

“Here.” Eskel leans over and, when Markus tips his head further in his direction, sets his finger to Markus’ lips.

They’re not soft. But there’s something electric in their slightly bashful eye contact, in the way that Markus keeps looking away and then back. Eskel feels the tips of his ears heat up as his gaze bounces between Markus’ lips and his eyes. And maybe he keeps it up for longer than necessary, smoothing his finger back and forth over Markus’ blood-weeping lips until the most of the balm has been absorbed, but it can’t hurt to offer a kind touch when Markus has been abused for so long. It’s not selfish. If his entire body throbs with an undercurrent not unlike magic, then that’s just a side effect. Maybe it’s the balm.

But the way that Markus’ pupils are slowly dilating from slits could suggest otherwise.

When he’s done, he sets the balm aside with hands that he won’t admit are shaking and glances at the windows. It’s growing late. He’s missed morning training and is well into missing the baths, but if he leaves soon he’ll be able to catch lunch.

“You have to go?” Markus breathes after a long period of silence, even Triss moving cautiously as if she can sense the undercurrent of tension in the room.

“I do,” he says. The thought of leaving Markus still hurts, even though he’s clearly well. “When Geralt comes down to ask you questions…”

“Be there.” Markus’ tone leaves no room for argument.

Eskel fights a smile as his heart thrills and says simply, “Okay. I’ll be there.”

**Author's Note:**

> Me? Posting two things in like three days? Very rare, actually. I've been working on this for a while now, and I'm pretty proud of it; let me know if you enjoyed it, too!


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